Outside the Box

Photo by Joe Pugliese © USA Network

Gabrielle Anwar left Hollywood behind for Miami, where her hit show, Burn Notice, and a new love have elevated her to a new level of happiness.

By Linda Marx

As a rebellious teen growing up in England, Gabrielle Anwar was a mess. The actress, who plays Fiona Glenanne, an ex-IRA soldier in Burn Notice, USA Network’s popular Miami-based original series, did not enjoy academia, drama school, or her female colleagues. She couldn’t get with the program, and her parents—mom was a former actress; dad, a successful film editor who would leave the family for months at a time—threw up their hands in frustration. Their beautiful daughter had left their rural Windsor home at age 13 to study drama and dance in London and was quite unhappy. And they didn’t know what to do about it. “I was born outside of the box and couldn’t get back in,” says Anwar, 41, of her six years at the Italia Conti school. “I had a difficult time with my female peer group and couldn’t participate in the feminine competition because there was too much backstabbing. The girls were mean, and I was miserable.”

Anwar was lucky that at age 15 she got hired for the BBC miniseries Hideway, and could leave school to travel with a tutor. She felt more at home on the set with older people—and so she never looked back. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven after studying ballet and Shakespeare, then getting paid to actually do these things,” she recalls. “Since my career was successful at an early age, I could have gone back to school on a scholarship.  But I did not want to endure another day of the estrogen-fueled Lord of the Flies.” The ethereal beauty took college exams, but all she really needed was to get a grip on her emotional needs. So she used some of her acting money to buy a country house in her hometown of Windsor while actively pursuing her career.

Anwar, who today lives in Miami Beach with her three children Willow, 17, Hugo, 10, and Paisley, 7, and her boyfriend, Shareef Malnik, owner of The Forge restaurant, pursed a string of commercials, did more TV projects and started shooting films all over Europe. She made her movie debut in 1988’s Manifesto and continued her work with BBC TV productions, including First Born, Summer’s Lease, Press Gang and The Mysteries of the Dark Jungle.

While acting in Europe, she met American actor Craig Sheffer, who later became the father of Willow. In 1989, when Anwar was 19, they moved to Los Angeles together but never married. “Here I was in Los Angeles with an actor, yet I didn’t want to act,” she recalls. “I had the longing to raise a family. But I ended up acting anyway, making films, having a lawyer and agent.”